Encouraging news from a new survey of office workers, which has found that men waste an average of two hours and 10 minutes a day at work. This impressive amount of non-work time is achieved thanks to the much-maligned computer, which has been reinvented as a digital skiving aid.

The good thing about these modern typewriters is that to any passing boss, you will look like you are working even if you are doing something pleasurable or useful, just as long as you keep up that earnest stare, with your hand on the mouse, and chin in hand - the look that says: "I am doing something really important right now."

The survey, commissioned by telephone operators ntl:Telewest Business, reveals that we use the office computer to email friends, follow sport online, arrange our social lives and buy stuff from online shops. I imagine a lot of time will be spent looking at "amusing" emails and obscene websites. It appears that the very technology that was designed to squeeze more efficiency out of the workers has in reality ended up creating much less. This is because the managers didn't factor in the huge capacity for creative skiving of the great British worker.

"Communication tools that once contributed to productivity have started to become a drain on it," was the comment from one Stephen Beynon, managing director of ntl:Telewest Business. One wonders exactly where Mr Beynon's interest in these findings lies. Is his company about to announce new software that prevents employees from talking to friends or shopping while at work? Or is he about to announce a sideline in quills and leather-bound ledger books, and therefore has an interest in pointing out the many downsides of digital technology?

Well, what we can thank Mr Beynon for is revealing the simple truth: the working day is much too long. In skiving this much we are sending a clear message to the bosses - the sensible thing would be not to introduce measures that will force workers to slave harder, but simply to reduce the working day by two hours and 10 minutes. The nine-to-five should be replaced by the ten-past-ten-to-four.

Until then, we should be proud of our inexhaustible ability to subvert the plans of the productivity experts.

· Tom Hodgkinson is editor of the Idler and author of How To Be Idle (Penguin, £7.99). To order a copy with free UK p&p, go to guardian.co.uk/bookshop or call 0870 836087